An institutional setting, such as a healthcare facility, may have a very complex structure. Typically, a large amount of physical and human resources are relied upon to provide a wide variety of services, including clinical as well as non-clinical services, both routine and emergency.
To address the evolving needs of the healthcare facility, various customized systems have been implemented over the years to deliver services on an individual basis. However, this service-specific approach comes at a high cost of installation and maintenance. In addition, as greater numbers of service-specific systems are installed alongside and on top of one another, the distribution and usage of physical and human resources in the healthcare facility becomes sub-optimal, to the point where it may well fall below mission-critical standards. Some of the issues include a multiplicity of differing infrastructures, differing and non-coordinated Human-Machine interfaces, both at the user level and at the IT-management level, lack of integration between systems and inability to move information between disparate systems. This situation is undesirable and, should it occur, may negatively taint a clinician's experience as well as the usability of the technology and lead the clinician to reject rather than embrace future technological advancement, despite its lifesaving potential.
Thus, there is a need in the industry to develop a system that enables the provision of a wide range of services in an institutional setting such as a healthcare facility without the drawbacks of conventional service-specific solutions.